Jamie Condliffe

Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan has admitted to a court that he never saw emails from city officials about police brutality by his force during Occupy Oakland - because they were being redirected to his spam folder.

The police chief explained how he used a spam-filter to automatically relegate mail containing phrases like "occupy," "police brutality," "press pass," and "excessive force" to his junk folder, never to be looked at. In Jordan's defense, he does claim it was an accident. SF Gate explains:

The city investigation found that Jordan had city staff put in the filters on Oct. 27, 2011 - two days after a violent clash between police and protesters that made international news. He had been inundated with anonymous messages, he said in a declaration to the court.

But he forgot the e-mail filter was still in effect.

"Accidents" have this great way of explaining away a lot of mistakes. [SFGate via BoingBoing]